


Acceptance

by musamihi



Category: Eroica Yori Ai o Komete | From Eroica with Love
Genre: Angst, Five Stages of Grief, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-07
Updated: 2013-12-07
Packaged: 2018-01-03 22:29:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1073801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musamihi/pseuds/musamihi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Klaus has some things to come to term with.  Or just one thing.  One incredibly vexing thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Acceptance

_I. Denial._

"Will you cut it out?" It was almost impossible to understand the menu with Eroica's stare boring through it. The stiff, heavy paper was no shield against his sickening attentions. "I'm losing my appetite." Not that he had much of one anyhow, for the food they served here - but business was business, and foreign food hadn't been the worst thing about this trip, not by a long shot.

"You're not the only one." 

Klaus lowered the menu warily - the thief gave him a quick, sly smile and raised his glass of wine, glancing pointedly at the reflection floating on the curved crystal. 

"To your success, Major. I was so happy to help."

The dwindling sunlight at his six o'clock and the candles scattered on the tables of the hotel's patio laid clear pictures: Klaus grudgingly raised his tumbler to oblige Eroica's pretension of a toast, and searched the resulting reflection for suspicious characters.

"She's been making eyes in your direction since you sat down. I'm afraid it doesn't speak highly for her intelligence - but, on the other hand, I will occasionally settle for a rear view myself."

"Don't be disgusting." Klaus lowered his glass, and the distorted woman in the blue dress was lost behind him again. Eroica's legs were crossed too close to his under the table. He waited until Eroica was engaged with the waiter - his Greek was better - to reposition himself for a better view of the ocean. She was broad-shouldered, and the softness of her bare arms looked like it only went skin-deep. She smiled easily. She had a strong face. The waves breaking in the background masked Eroica's final orders as Klaus turned back to the table.

Eroica leaned too far into his space to hand their menus to the waiter, and Klaus thought about the woman gazing at his back.

_II. Anger._

It had been - so hard, almost impossible. He had never imagined -

But he had done it. Like everything else. It took discipline, effort, work - like sitting on this fucking island, playing middle man to the thief and the enemy, because that was what he had to do. Business. It could be so hard.

But he had done it. She knew, though. She probably knew before he did.

The shower was stabbing at his skin, brutally cold - he was digging into the flesh of his shoulder with the tips of his fingers. He knew that wasn't supposed to be hard, wasn't supposed to be business, that it should have been the easiest thing in the world to - to -

He stood staring at the powerless vortex around the drain, willing it faster and stronger until he wanted to kick it, to obliterate it completely. He stood there staring at it until he heard the outer door open and close again, until she left. The water rushing around his ears was furiously loud. Of course she knew. She probably felt sorry for him.

He had done it, but there had never been anything so hard in his entire life.

_III. Bargaining._

The next night Klaus sat at the bar, rows of tables, tinted glass and thick curtains separating him from the sea. It was getting late, and there were only five or six people left milling around in the lobby. Eroica had gone out on the town, thank god, to inflict his wandering hands and plunging necklines on somebody else, and beside him instead was a stranger with the local thick black hair and laconic eyes. They were the last two at the bar, had been for almost an hour, nursing their drinks almost sip for sip. Klaus finished his scotch - the ice had melted half an hour ago, and it tasted cheap, thin, fake. It wasn't what he wanted, but there it was. It took the edge off.

He slid his empty glass across the bar, the trail of condensation recoiling into fastidious droplets repelled by the too-thick finish. It came away in waxy pieces when he dug his fingernails into it.

The scotch had been cheap, the scotch had been watered down, but it had done the job, and he didn't need another one. He caught the stranger's eye, and headed for the patio, and down the wooden stairs onto the beach. He left his jacket hanging on the back of the bar stool.

_IV. Depression._

It had been too easy. His jacket lay crumpled on the sand beside him, one of the sleeves stirring minutely when the breeze came in off the water. Klaus leaned back against one of the deeply grooved beams that rose into the pier up above him, and sat in its pitch black shadow, the sand warm and yielding beneath him.

It was over, now, and this part was easier than he expected, too. Warm, soft, dark - a hopeless blackness stretching out into the void, so easy to follow, so like the pier. If he just looked out into that nothing - if he could keep from looking at the single line of footsteps that wandered easily back to the hotel patio, he could imagine that the tide had already come and swallowed them up, had erased them from the pages of the beach. He could forget where he had been. He could ignore the old, demolished pier out to the west, the lonely vertical posts no longer attached to any boardwalk, the shortest of which were disappearing, rising, disappearing, and rising again from the endless waves. He could pretend that it would all just stay flooded over and hidden, that the tide would never go out again.

_V. Acceptance._

Klaus heard the footsteps before he felt them, although they were only soft scratching noises. He looked up. It was good to see Eroica alarmed, really startled, just for once.

He got over it before very long. His laugh had a slight echo to it here.

"My darling Major. Are you out to see the stars?" He held a pair of sandals in one hand. "There's no better place to capture the glory of gods and men, I shouldn't think. Do you know, we aren't very far from what they used to call the center of the world? If there were any more light you could see the very island where the twins were born, and I do believe -"

"Do you ever stop talking?" Klaus raised his wrist close to his face, trying to make out the time. 

"When I've better to do." Eroica's smile was perfectly white, even in the rich darkness under the pier. "I think if you gave me a chance, you'd find me more than willing -"

"Keep walking!"

Eroica laughed and passed under the pier, leaving Klaus to scowl out to sea. "Don't get washed away, Major," Eroica called back over his shoulder as he made his way toward the colorful lights of the hotel. "I need someone to swear to how very good I've been, when we get back."

When he was gone, Klaus glared down at the deep footprints he had left in the damp sand. There was water welling up in the hollows where he had stood. Klaus shoved his hand into the ground beside him. Here it was only a half a foot down to the water that he knew was lying everywhere under the beach, if one were to dig deep enough.

He sighed, and threw one of his shoes out into the surf, but without very much conviction.


End file.
